The first is a Help Desk person assisting a user with some new technology (and having been a Help Desk person for a few years, I can really relate to this one!)
(If you can’t view it from this site, try: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX0-nqRmtos)
The second is a brilliant animation – again, if you can’t view it from this site, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE&eurl=
(oops! messed up the embedding… will find out more and try again a bit later. Meantime, use the links! Sorted!)
I’ve talked about customer service before, and about how for me it’s often not what the issue is as much how it’s resolved. [Example 1, example 2, and example 3.]
Today I read two great articles on customer service: one was from Kathy Sierra’s “Creating Passionate Users” blog, a blog I read every time she writes a new entry – this one was titled: “What tail is wagging the ‘user happiness’ dog?“; the other was on “Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service” on Joel Spolsky’s site (referred to by Kathy). I read “Joel On Software” every so often, and invariably he – like Kathy – have messages that resonate with me.
If you have a spare few minutes, go ahead and read them both – they’re worth it!
I mentioned the other day that my father-in-law had passed away. Now my husband (one of the executors) is dealing with finalising things such as bank accounts etc.
The bank wants a whole lot of stuff before it will close the account – things like the death certificate (understandable) and his father’s birth certificate. I have no idea *why* they want the birth certificate – they would’ve have required it years ago when he opened the account. Anyhow, the birth certificate cannot be found.
So my husband goes to the government website for Births, Deaths, and Marriages and downloads the application form for getting a certificate. (BTW, this application costs $40 + $30 more if the request is urgent… money for jam, if you ask me!).
Now, get this! The instructions under who can get a birth certificate state that only the person named on the birth certificate or that person’s parents, can apply for a birth certificate! What the???? The father-in-law was 81, and has been cremated. Obviously his parents are long gone. So how the hell does my husband (his eldest son and Executor) get a birth certificate to show the bank so the bank can close the account???
This is bureaucracy gone mad!
Root canal work on a lower molar late yesterday afternoon. Had the last of the pumpkin soup and some jelly and yoghurt for dinner last night… After the anaesthetic wore off fully around 10:00pm last night, the pain was horrible. Took a couple of pain killers (not the real knockout ones – I finished them back when the tooth was infected), but they didn’t really help a lot. Must’ve eventually got to sleep as I was woken by the alarm. Tooth and jaw still sore – steak is out of the question as is crusty bread or anything else I have to chomp down on!
One nerve was removed – another one or two to go in a month’s time. I’m looking forward to that – NOT!
After my final comment in yesterday’s post about “not having a good day”, all those service annoyances paled into insignificance when my husband called to tell me his father had had a massive coronary in the ambulance on the way to hospital and was unable to be revived. He was 81 and had been in dementia care for some months.
Another chapter on our life in Perth closes… Rest in peace, Allan.
We’re back! Actually we got back on Friday after almost a week down south doing very little.
Last Saturday morning we drove down to Busselton (where my folks live). Then mid-afternoon we headed over to my sister’s and all her family for Christmas at the farm (they have 50 acres in the Yallingup Shire).
My sister and the nieces and nephews (well, one!) were cooking up a storm. It was a hot day but we had the works for Christmas Eve dinner – a roast ballantine of turkey (the turkey was stuffed with a duck, which was stuffed with a chicken, which was stuffed with… stuffing!), crispy roast potatoes and other roast veges, green beans and broccoli, a superb cheese sauce, perfectly blended gravy, and cranberry sauce. All followed by a yummy sticky date pudding with butterscotch sauce courtesy of Michelle. Someone forgot to put the ham on the plates, but it didn’t matter – we had more than enough!
Before dinner, we sang Christmas carols with “Sir Elton” Bill on the keyboards and Shannon on the microphone. Someone had thoughtfully printed out and photocopied the words to all the carols, so we weren’t sitting there ‘la la la’ing for the second and third verses. Will loved “Jingle Bells” and seemed to know all the words.
Of course, having a little boy aged 3-and-a-half around meant that the pressure was on to get some of the presents opened before dinner instead of after! What started out as ‘just a couple of presents’ became the lot. The nieces and nephews all received lots of food-related gifts – either food or cookbooks. And of course little Will got more stuff than he could take in at once.
The highlight of the afternoon was the gifts that Will gave his Dad and older brothers and sisters – they all got Collingwood beanies, caps, and scarves. The transformation from Dockers supporters to Collingwood supporters is almost complete… Paul was home for Christmas – it was good to see him again, and he’s looking really well. He enjoyed the Collingwood bonding session in the US when they went to Arizona for high altitude training a few weeks back. Oh, and Paul gave Will a Collingwood guernsey with his new number on it. Will looked a treat!
| The rest of the week was spent quietly at Mum and Dad’s, except for Wednesday when we went over to Bridgetown to have lunch at the Cidery with a couple who are building in rammed earth, then to take a look at the progress of their building. Their house looks fabulous and the colour and texture of the walls is magic! |  |
They can see our block from their kitchen and family room – we’ve already arranged to have a red flag and a white flag to run up the yet-to-be-installed flagpole when the red or white wine has been poured!
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Once we finished with them, we met the Property Manager at the house where we’ll be living temporarily to go through the maintenance things that have to get done between now and when the tenant moves out on Jan 27 and we move in on or around Feb 20. I also measured up the rooms as we don’t know what furniture we can take with us or have to put into storage or give to the Good Sammies. It was a damned hot day in Bridgetown – yes, I know – it’s one of the coldest towns in WA, but hell, it was hot there on Wednesday! We were glad to get back into the air-conditioned car and drive the 75-90 minutes back to Busselton.
On Thursday we went into Busselton to look at and purchase light fittings for the Bridgetown house – those that are there need replacing, and I want some decent lights in the kitchen and the family room where we’ll have the study/office. Currently, there are two open fluoros in those rooms; the bathroom light doesn’t work at all; there’s no cover on the hallway light; the bedroom light shades are cheap and nasty plastic ones; and the light fitting outside the laundry door isn’t weatherproof and is falling apart – a safety hazard if nothing else… $400 later and we had 2 sets of 4-track halogens, 5 oysters, 1 bunker light, and a tropical fluoro for the bathroom (tropical meaning it’s OK in humid, moist areas).
We left the folks on Friday and came back to Perth the long way via Bridgetown, as we had to drop off the light fittings so the electrician can fit them when he gets to do his part of the maintenance program.
Yesterday (Saturday) and today I’ve been sorting, purging, and packing. More to come tomorrow, but for now, I’m buggered! Oh, and yesterday I also did an inventory of all our furniture, and made mock-ups of the rooms and the furniture (using SmartDraw 2007), and placed almost everything – sorry, no spare bedroom for visitors… both extra bedrooms will be store rooms! There are only a few smaller pieces that won’t fit, so it looks like we may not need a storage unit after all! We’ll be giving some furniture away, but not a lot. At least not this round. When we’ve built the new house, we’ll do the big purge of all the old furniture.
So that brings me up to date. Tonight is New Year’s Eve, but I think I’ll only be seeing the backs of my eyelids come midnight! More purging and packing tomorrow…
Almost forgot – while I was hunting out things to pack in nooks and crannies of boxes, I found this storage jar. At some point it got hot! So there’s this whole Salvador Dali thing happening with the rubber seal.
Since we accepted the offer on the house last Wed (13 Dec), things have been moving at a fair clip. The purchasers have agreed to a later settlement date (‘closing date’ for those of you in North America) of Feb 20, 2007; the building inspection was done last Friday; the bank valuation was done today; the deposit was paid today; and my other half purchased some 50 packing boxes from a removals company yesterday, as well as making calls to the cable company about what to do to get satellite when we move, etc.
I’ve been in contact with the Property Manager in Bridgetown to arrange for maintenance and repairs to be done on the investment house we’ll be living in after Feb 20, and she told me she may have found another house for the current tenant. If that’s the case, then all these things look like they may dovetail in nicely with us moving down at the end of February or thereabouts.
Oh, and somewhere in there I had a birthday, continued going to work, attended one client’s Christmas Party, and in my spare time did some work for an ad hoc client, and did quotes and draft contracts for two potentially new small clients (one to edit their geological reports, the other to do their newsletter template and edit the content), and sorted Christmas gifts!
We celebrated my birthday in style at the Bluewater Grill in Applecross. The venue was suberb – overlooking the Swan River and the city on a balmy summer’s evening (and with daylight saving the sun didn’t go down until well after 8pm); the food was fantastic (I had the grilled swordfish and a to-die-for warm fig pudding with a butterscotch sauce; hubby had the fillet steak); the service was reasonable to good; but a lovely evening was let down by a couple of small things.
First, the bar was full of Xmas party people when we arrived, so we had to have our pre-dinner drinks at the table. That was OK, except for the fact that our drinks took an age to arrive. Mojitos weren’t on the cocktail list, but I asked the waiter if they could make one – he said yes, and took the order + my husband’s beer request. And we waited, and waited, and waited… We’d also ordered a bottle of red to have with dinner and asked for it to be opened now to breathe. So there we sat – open bottle of red on the table, waiting for our pre-dinner drinks. After about 15 minutes (and asking where the drinks were) someone came over to apologise and say they “didn’t have any mint for the Mojito” (it’s a bar for heaven’s sake!!!) and would I like a “<blah>” instead. After explaining the ingredients (lots of lime!), I agreed, and asked where my husband’s beer was as he could’ve had that while we waited for my drink. So the beer came, as did my drink – eventually.
The other disappointment was the tables and chairs themselves. This is basically an outdoor venue, but plastic tables and chairs with NO covering at all was a bit too much like a cheap cafe. And the Bluewater Grill ain’t cheap! With the bare placcy tables and chairs, brick paving/concrete etc. there was nothing to absorb the sound, so even though we were outside, it was very noisy. The large umbrellas over some of the area just seemed to capture and bounce the sound around. For the price, I’d have expected cloths on the tables.
Despite all that, it was a lovely night.
The following day (Friday) I had my 2-day-a-week client’s Christmas Party. They’d chosen to go to a lawn bowling club – and it was the one around the corner from where we live! How cool was that! After last year’s experience of waiting 2+ hours for a cab that never came, I wasn’t keen on repeating that experience, so was mightily pleased that I could just walk 50m and be there. We had great fun – most of us had never bowled before, and we had a small tournament with the staff from the sister company upstairs. Lots of laughs and cheers and fun. And a bit of sunburn too!
The weekend was super hot (38C on Saturday, from memory), so I did packing and Christmas present wrapping early in the mornings, then did paid work in the air-conditioned study the rest of the day. Oh, and I purged a HEAP of clothes from the wardrobe. To give you some idea… the boot (trunk) was full! and I ended up with THREE shopping bags of wire coat hangers to give away! I thought of selling the clothes ‘on consignment’ to a recycling boutique, but they were very finicky about what they wanted – “summer dresses, current fashions (yeah, right!), strappy sandals, no skirts, no tops, no trousers”. So I decided that these good business/work clothes in good condition could go to a better home! I contacted the Belmont Clothes Library [which has now closed down], and they put me on the YWCA in Osborne Park who are setting up a similar thing for the unemployed. The whole idea of a clothes library is that unemployed people can borrow clothes for attending interviews etc. I figured my clothes would fit that market much better than the recycling boutiques! Sure, I don’t make any money on them, but they’ve gone to a good home where I hope the classic (not fashionable!) jackets, shoes, tops, trousers etc. can help someone get a job. (There was even a Louis Feraud blouse and a Giorgio Armani suit amongst the throw-outs… the recycling boutique missed out on them, ‘cos they were so finickety!)
So that prety much brings me up to date. We’re off down south for Christmas with the family (Busselton area), so I doubt I’ll be posting much/at all until early January.
Have a wonderful Christmas season wherever and however you spend it. And for those of you in North America, it’s expected to be 36C here on Christmas Day – that’s about 100F in your money!
Last week I was in increasing pain from my lower jaw. To the point that I scooted to the doctor’s on Tuesday afternoon, convinced I had bone cancer! (The pain wasn’t muscular, or specific to a tooth, not even sensitive to touch – it felt like it was in the bone.) My kind doctor sent me off to get an x-ray taken which happened Wednesday morning. He got the results that afternoon – nothing obvious. No bone disease (relief!), no infection that they could see. Nothing.
But hell – something was there as the pain was getting worse. By late Wednesday afternoon, the pain had localised to a tooth… a left rear molar that had had a crown some years ago. My first thought was “root canal”! I still had some strong painkillers left from May when I had previously had a tooth infection that required root canal work (yuk!). So I dusted them off in order to sleep on Wednesday night. They worked – too well! I was like a zombie on Thursday morning and incapable of driving a car or even moving my limbs too much.
So no work for me on Thursday. I got in to the dentist in the afternoon and my worst fears were confirmed – her x-ray showed an infection at the base of the tooth where the nerve has died and root canal work is now scheduled for mid-January (something to look forward to – NOT!). She also prescribed some antibiotics and some more pain killers.
So after paying $60 for the Dr’s visit, $70 for the x-ray, $100 for the dentist, and $30 for the drugs, I’m finally (5 days later) starting to feel half human again now that the antibiotics are taking control of the infection.
Though I’m not looking forward to the dental bill for the root canal work. I’ll get some of this back on private health insurance but nowhere near what it will cost me.
Bummer.
Got home from work this afternoon to another batch of Christmas flyers and store catalogues in the mail. Mostly I skim them ever so lightly then throw them in the paper recycling bin. But today one caught my eye. It’s for a new women’s clothing boutique not far from here, and the catch line was “… If it makes your bum look big, we’ll tell you! …”
I’d like to see that!
Bit of a funny week last week. There was the preparation for the home open on Saturday (most of which was done on Saturday morning); one of my remoter clients was down from Darwin and we spent all Thursday going through stuff (and Wednesday night with him at the local Indian restaurant [Suriyen]); then on Saturday afternoon we walked to the revamped Karalee Tavern in Como for lunch while the house was open; friends popped by unexpectedly in the afternoon to look at the house; then on Saturday night we went to the Ten Ten Kitchen for a meal with some other friends, followed by some Texas Hold’ Em poker.
And all through Thurdsay, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we heard the mosquito buzzing of the planes in the Red Bull Air Race that was held in Perth on Sunday. Following the race, the streets around our house were gridlocked for a while (a bit like the Skyshow, except during the day), but I did notice a Jaguar and a Mercedes stop and take a good long look at the “for sale” sign outside the house. Maybe???
So, it was a busy week. Oh, and the hubby is back swimming again, and is already up to 1500m!
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 